To The Limit
by Meredith T. Tasaki
Summary: Josh told Sam to stay out of Washington. Sam realizes why.


Rating: PG, just for the occasional bad word.  
  
Disclaimer: I own neither The West Wing nor any Eagles songs. Which is very depressing to me, but I must dredge up the painful memories again for legality's sake. Dangit. ;)  
  
Summary: Josh told Sam to stay out of Washington. Sam realizes why.  
  
Spoilers: Uh, up to about the middle of the fifth season, but I wouldn't say that anything could actually "spoil" those episodes, they're so mediocre already...  
  
(-)  
  
You spent a couple of weeks in your parents' house-- your mother's house-- after it happened... You listened to all your old albums and felt sorry for yourself.  
  
And then you made a mistake, another mistake: you started going through your old Eagles albums again. You didn't expect that it would still have an effect on you. You weren't aware that you were whole enough to be anywhere but down. You didn't expect anything but nostalgia and cynicism.  
  
But by the time "Take it to the Limit" started playing, it was sounding a whole lot like redemption.  
  
Maybe you weren't so stupid when you were that age.  
  
And that thought makes the inevitable connections to innocence and idealism and possibility. Maybe you weren't so stupid.  
  
Maybe it was a stupid thing to think, but it got you downstairs to make your mother some dinner.  
  
And you called Josh, and he told you to stay the hell out of Washington.  
  
That daunted you. To put it mildly. Because Josh told you, quote-unquote, stay the hell out of Washington. And... yeah, it hurt. Maybe a little more than it should.  
  
But you went on with your life, watched CNN all the time-- well, whenever you could. You signed up for a job as a public defender, and you have almost as little time now as you did back then. Back then... Like it's a fairy tale, or long ago and far away...  
  
Vague perceptions of the budget crisis, after the decidedly concrete perceptions of Zoey's kidnapping, which was when you called Josh again. Which confused the hell out of you, because you could tell Josh knew he had hurt you-- it had been so long, anyone could have figured it out, even Josh--and you could tell Josh felt... Well, you could tell Josh wasn't happy about it, but he hadn't said a single word about it, hadn't mentioned it even once, just said "Yeah" when you apologised for not calling in... a few months.  
  
And you saw-- something, you don't know what-- on CNN or MSNBC or, hell, you can't remember, maybe you were mocking Fox News-- something in the White House, or something. You saw them all again, Toby and Josh and CJ and Leo and the President.  
  
You barely recognised them. And it wasn't because of time.  
  
You suddenly realized what Josh had actually said to you.  
  
You called him, thinking about time zones for all of two seconds before officially not caring.  
  
"Jerk," you said.  
  
"Yeah, I've... been made aware of that, many times. Usually with more preamble, though. Sam?"  
  
"Yeah," you said. "Stay the hell out of Washington. What, were you having trouble with prepositional phrases? Or were you just being a damn jerk?"  
  
"Uh, a jerk? And I thought you were okay with that."  
  
"I was, I wasn't, hell, Josh, you could have told me, you could have explained."  
  
"I, uh..."  
  
"I don't care if you're not a writer, I don't care about things you say on the phone, you could have explained that."  
  
"..."  
  
"I know what you meant, Josh. No thanks to you. Why the hell didn't you tell me?" That everything was starting to fall to hell, you meant, but you didn't have to say that kind of thing aloud to him.  
  
"How the hell was I supposed to do that?"  
  
And you heard what he didn't, couldn't, wouldn't say, like you always have, and you were... a little bit touched.  
  
"Yeah," you said, softly.  
  
"So I can try to get my three hours of sleep now."  
  
"Josh," you said, "get the hell out of Washington."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"When you can, as soon as you can."  
  
"Where could I go?"  
  
"Maybe... one last favor for an old friend? In a few years, when...?"  
  
A pause, and you knew the smile that was on Josh's face like you were standing in his doorway.  
  
"Put me on a highway," Josh said.  
  
He hung up, and you knew he knew you'd know what that meant.  
  
The hollow look you'd seen in their eyes, this bitter breakup that Josh had seen coming, the strangers you'd seen on TV...  
  
Suddenly you were worried about him, worried so much that you couldn't breathe evenly and your heart was beating like you were running a race.  
  
And that's why you're here, with your headphones, like you did when you were a teenager, except this time you're trying to steady yourself with beer. But you find the beer isn't what's steadying you so much as the CD you bought on your first walk back into the city where you lost. And you're still worried, because phoenix though Josh Lyman is, you're scared to death he won't rise from this fire intact.  
  
"So put me on a highway," the man sings, and if you weren't crying before, you are now.  
  
"And show me a sign..."  
  



End file.
